Page 26 of Beware of Dog (Lean Dogs Legacy #6)

Cass was prepared for a variety of responses.

A sharp bark of laughter, because he thought she was joking.

A hard, swift no, are you insane? You’re a kid, and I only fuck grown-ass women .

Or, worse, a sneer, and a head toss, and a description of the last woman he’d been with, and all the ways Cass couldn’t hope to measure up.

This possibility left her stomach cramping, head filling with images of blonde bombshells and smoky poolhalls.

Or he might blow up, all his anger finally unleashed in a shouting, cursing tirade.

What she didn’t expect, however, was exactly what she got: silence. Humming, dread-laced, expressionless silence.

She let it drag out for five seconds. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty . Shep didn’t blink.

She didn’t think that she would laugh until a high, half-crazed giggle bubbled out of her. She covered, and then just as quickly uncovered her mouth. “Are you frozen? Did I freeze you?”

Still, he didn’t blink.

She took a deep breath, and sighed it back out. “Francis.”

He finally spoke, his voice like gravel under tires. “Stop saying my name.”

“Do you not like it?” He blinked some more, and Cass could feel her bravery shrinking up like cotton candy in the rain.

But because she was, at heart, as he always said, a little brat, she kept going.

“Do you not like my birthday request?” Fear crawled through her insides, cold and sharp. Outright rejection would be crushing.

But he didn’t reject her.

His throat jerked in a painful-looking way when he swallowed. Cass could hear the bone-dry click of it across the table. His eyes went very big, and very dark, and Cass realized, with a thrill, that this was the opposite of a dismissal. “Cassie,” he rasped. “Don’t—don’t ask me for that.”

She leaned forward in her chair. “Why not?”

He looked pained for a split-second, and then wiped at his jaw, schooled his features. “Don’t ask me that either, college girl. You know all the reasons why not.”

She could guess them, at least, and none of them felt like insurmountable inevitabilities, not like they were when she’d had crushes on Lean Dogs before.

This wasn’t a crush . She’d cried like the child she still was when she learned Reese wanted to kiss her brother instead of her, but even then she’d known she’d simply been infatuated, that she hadn’t had any sort of connection with Reese.

Same with Toly, and she hadn’t even shed a tear then.

It had been more of a sigh, an “always a bridesmaid, never a bride” sense of being too young and too discounted by the adult outlaws around her.

In no way had Shep ever made her feel too young or too discounted, not even when he called himself her “babysitter.”

She said, “Are you afraid of my family?” just to be a shit.

His head kicked back, familiar frown lines tugging at his forehead. “I’ll punch your whole goddamn family in the face.” Then his frown shifted to a more thoughtful one. “I mean…probably not the baby. But I’d pay to hit Tenny.”

Cass bit down hard on a smile.

“Shep,” she said, when she had her grin under control. “Did you know you’re my best friend?”

The stricken look on his face was funny, and a little bit heartbreaking.

“You’re my favorite person,” she continued. “Out of everyone. I would always rather watch crap telly with you than spend time with anyone from school. And I like to argue with you, and steal sips out of your glass, and I like—”

He held up a hand—she stopped—and then he put his hands on the table and bowed his head. “Cassie,” he pleaded.

God, but she loved when he called her that. It made her want to hug him, and breathe his cologne off the collar of his shirt.

More quietly, losing steam, she said, “If you think I’d rather have some boy my own age, or that I’ll change my mind, I won’t.”

He shook his head, still bent.

Then the door opened.

Cass wanted to shout with dismay.

Shep jerked upright and whipped toward the soft click of the lock.

Melissa entered, looking peeved, swiping back loose tendrils from her ponytail. “Okay, so, Bryce is a little piece of shit.”

“Whaaaat?” Shep said with an exaggerated brow lift. “Who’dathunk that ?”

Melissa glared at him, but then went businesslike, and swapped her gaze between the two of them.

“Sig found out that Bryce is the one who flipped on him. So then Sig called him up and flipped him back. Bryce cracked and admitted the whole story. He was planning to recant his statement, and Sig wanted him to provide him with intel on you.” The last she said to Cass .

“On me? What sort of intel?”

Melissa gave her a very serious look. “He wants scoop on your family. Your friends. In his words: ‘everything you care about.’”

Shep turned and kicked one of the rolling chairs. It skidded across the room, slammed into the wall, and sent a handful of dry erase markers flying.

“Obviously,” Melissa started, and Shep rounded on her.

“Arrest his ass. Both their asses.” To Melissa’s credit, she didn’t shrink away, not from his furious expression, nor tone, nor the way he got too close and loomed over her.

“That’s witness tampering at the very fucking least for both of them, and a false statement for that one out there, and the first little fuck is making threats against an outcry witness! ”

Melissa held both hands up, palms toward him. “We’re going to speak with him, obviously. And Bryce. But I’m going to say again, since you’re getting hysterical , that this is our situation to handle. Not yours. Back off , Shepherd.”

A vein throbbed visibly in his temple, but his voice went low and spooky-quiet. “Oh, back off, huh? You’re giving me orders?”

“I’m saying I won’t protect your dumb ass if you meddle in police business.”

“And I’m saying, that I will tear every fucking preppy college boy in a ten-mile radius to fucking pieces if she gets one scratch on her. Do you understand me? Are we clear?”

Melissa’s eyes widened. “Holy shit,” she breathed.

“ Do you understand me ?”

“Yeah. I understand.”

Shep glared at her hard a moment, then flipped his sunglasses back into place and yanked the door open. “Cass, we’re going.”

Melissa turned slowly, still bug-eyed, and looked at Cass. Cass could feel that her own eyes were big, and her heart was knocking, too, heat slowly forming and swirling in her veins.

“ Cassandra !” he barked.

“Coming, coming.” She skirted around the table and shot Melissa a furtive wave as she exited.

Shep didn’t slow down to wait for her, but strode purposefully through the bullpen and the outer hallway, forcing her to keep up. He did turn, though, once he was aboard the elevator, and held the door for her.

A detective arrived on her heels, but Shep growled, “Take the next one,” in such a forbidding tone that the man said, “Shit,” and held back.

Then the doors shut, and they were alone again.

Cass felt feverish. The heat was spreading, pooling in her breasts, her belly, between her legs. She started to shake, little internal tremors that she could feel, but not see when she held out her hand.

Beside her, aggression poured off of Shep. He breathed loud and rough like a bull, arms folded tight across his chest.

“Well,” Cass said, unsteadily. “That was…hot.”

Shep made a sound like he’d been punched in the gut, but said nothing.

And he kept on saying nothing, off the elevator, out the lobby doors, down the front steps.

Wordlessly handed her his spare helmet, and said nothing all the way back to the apartment, though it was common for him to shout stuff back over the roar of the engine.

He said nothing in the parking garage, or the sidewalk, nor his building’s elevator.

During the trip, Cass had gone from wildly elated and turned on to, slowly, disappointed. He wasn’t going to say anything at all to her, was he? The perpetual sense of being the young, annoying tagalong grew as the thrill faded, and she felt like crying as he let them into the apartment.

Poor, stupid, rejected Cass. Always a bother, always someone to babysit. She’d thought…but, no. When was she ever right? It was just that it hurt so much more this time, because it was Shep, who she really did love as a best friend, and favorite person, and who she knew she could love as more, too.

“I’ll get my things,” she said, starting past him as he shut the door. “You don’t have to take me, I’ll call an Uber—oh!”

His hand gripped her upper arm, not cruel, but firm, and her forward momentum swung her around so they faced one another.

She put up her hands to keep from crashing into his chest, but he caught her by the waist and steadied her before the collision happened.

She caught one fast glimpse of his face, the feral flash in his eyes, and had time to gasp, before the hand on her arm reached up, cupped the side of her face, and he kissed her.

Her mouth was open, and so was his—he was panting before he ducked down.

And so it was not the chaste, closed-mouth press she’d always imagined a first kiss should be.

It was better . He breathed a hot, ragged exhale into her mouth, and followed it with his tongue, one deep, slick press like their mouths were fucking, before he drew back, licking the backs of her teeth and then her top lip on the retreat.

Cass made a high, embarrassing sound and clutched at the front of his cut.

The heat roared back, a flashfire surge beneath every inch of her skin, and his eyes were nothing but pupil above her, worlds’ more intense than they’d been at the precinct.

That, she saw now, had only been a preview, his face carved now with such desperation that even an idiot virgin like her could recognize it… and be floored by it.

“Shep.” Oh, God, she thought she might faint if not for his hold, waist and jaw, careful, but not at all tentative. “What…?”